LAKERS NOTEBOOK: Artest says confrontation was a 'glitch'

OAKLAND - It almost seems like months, but it was only a few weeks ago when everything seemed to be going haywire for the Lakers. They lost three consecutive games and it looked like every misstep was a sign of weakness.

Then they won five games in a row and seven of eight.

Ron Artest's confrontation with Lakers coach Phil Jackson has been forgotten. Jackson's comments about Kobe Bryant's penchant for shooting too much are ancient history. So, too, is the memory of Pau Gasol oversleeping and missing a shootaround.

"We lost three in a row?" Ron Artest asked before the Lakers tried for their sixth consecutive victory on Wednesday against Golden State.

Yes, Ron, you lost to the Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs by 15 or more points in each game.

They also looked like a middle-of-the-pack team in each of those games and during a more recent loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.

"It was just a glitch," Artest said. "No matter how hard you play sometimes, a glitch is a glitch. You could be doing all the right things, but something is stuck. That's how we were a couple of weeks ago. It was real simple."

Artest said it was a little like trying to shut a door without realizing something was in the way. It didn't matter how hard you slammed the door, it wasn't going to close until the obstacle was removed from the door's path.

He didn't say what the obstacle was, however. "There were a couple of things that were wrong," he said.

Team chemistry wasn't one of them, no matter how it might have looked to outsiders. The Lakers, according to Artest, never were close to unraveling. He tried to explain the team's single-minded approach.

"We don't worry as much as people outside like fans or the media," he said. "A lot of stuff is happening around us, but we just get it together and go out there and try to win games.

"Ain't nothing to work out. Just move on. That's all that's important."

Rout by numbers

In addition to being the fewest points the Lakers had given up in a game during the shot-clock era, their 112-57 beatdown Tuesday of Cleveland also contained a few other fun facts as unearthed by the team's crack media relations department.

The Lakers came within one basket of becoming the second team in league history to score twice as many points as their opponent. Indiana's 124-59 blowout of Portland in February 1998 remains the only game in which that's happened.

When the Lakers took a 51-point lead over the Cavaliers to start the fourth quarter, it marked their first 50-point lead since Jan. 9, 2004, when they led by as many as 53 points en route to a 113-67 victory over Atlanta.

The Lakers' 55-point margin of victory was the Cavaliers' widest in their inglorious history. Cleveland's 57 points also represented a franchise-low.

It was the largest margin of victory in the NBA since Indiana's 65-point thrashing of Portland.